Site Navigation

Site Mobile Navigation

A HISTORIC CHARGE

This is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996.
To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them.

Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems.
Please send reports of such problems to archive_feedback@nytimes.com.

WASHINGTON, July 27—The House Judiciary Committee voted tonight, 27 to 11 to recommend the impeachment of President Nixon on a charge that he personally engaged in a “course of conduct” designed, to obstruct justice in the Watergate case.

This historic charge, the first to be lodged against President by a House investigating body since 1868, set in motion the constitutional process by which Mr. Nixon could ultimately be stripped of his office.

The charge became official when, at 5 minutes and 21 seconds after 7 o'clock tonight, Peter W. Rodino Jr., the committee's Democratic chairman, his head bobbing gently said “Aye,” and ended the committee's decisive roll‐call. He then adjourned the deliberations until 10:30 A.M. Monday.

The margin of the vote, with six of the committee's Republicans joining all 21 Democrats in adoption of the resolution, seemed certain to set a pattern for debate in the full House next month on the charge.

The six Republicans who voted for impeachment were Toni Railsback of Illinois, Hamilton Fish Jr. of upstate New York, Lawrence J. Hogan of Maryland, M. Caldwell Butler of Virginia, William S. Cohen of Maine and Harold V. Froehlich of Wisconsin.

Mr. Nixon would be subjected to a trial by the Senate should a majority of the House vote to approve the article of impeachment, or either of two other articles the Judiciary Committee is expected to debate and, in all likelihood, adopt early next week. Should any one of the charges be proved to the satisfaction of two‐thirds of the Senate, the President would automatically, be removed from office.

Specifically the committee charged that the President,. in violation of his constitutional oath to uphold the law, “engaged personally and through his subordinates or agents in a course of conduct or plan designed to delay, impede, and obstruct the investigation” of the ill‐fated burglary of the Democratic headquarters in the Watergate complex on June 17, 1972.

The article of impeachment listed nine methods by which he was alleged to have carried out the plan to obstruct justice.

They included accusations that Mr. Nixon had made “false pr misleading statements” to investigators, had concealed evidence of criminal wrongdoing, had counseled associates to commit perjury, had misused sensitive agencies of the Government and had approved or allowed the payment of hush money to convicted criminals.

The decision of the Judiciary Committee came painfully, as many of the members noted, hut, after months of investigation and days of both decorous and discordant debate, with swiftness.

Never Again

“I hope not one of us ever has to look into another matter of impeachment again,” Representative Walter Flowers, an Alabama Democrat, remarked just before the vote in which he decided in favor of impeachment.

Representative William L. Hungate, Democrat of Missouri, noted as he closed the two‐day‐long debate over the charge, that a iponument to the American war dead at Omaha Beach in France ought 10 characterize the moment at hand:

“They endured all and sufProd all that mankind might know freedom and inherit justice.”

Then in the arcane logic of the legislative process, came the two separate roll‐calls that were the culmination of the inquiry into the event, two years, one month and ten days ago that the White House had described as a “third‐rate burglary attempt.”

The first and decisive vote, Was on the motion to substilute and draft of Article I of the impeachment resolution offered by Representative Paul S. Sarbanes, Democrat of Mary land, for the original proposed by Representative Harold D. Donohue, Democrat of Massachusetts.

20th Is a Majority

Each in his turn the first 20 Democrats uttered a soft “aye,” the vote of the 20th, RepresSentative Edward Mezvinsky of Iowa, represented a majority i)f the 38, and the outcome.

On the roll‐call went, with Representative Edward Hutchinson of Michigan, the senior Republican, smiling as he boomed out, for the first time in the roll‐call, “No”

Mr. Froehlich had told rePorters in advance that he would probably abstain, but tonight he voted for impeachvent.

When the first roll‐call was over, and history implanted in the crowded, hot hearing room, The roll was called again, this time on whether to approve the Donohue motion, as substituted. lt was the same 27 to 11.

And Mr. Rodino, his face red, a wan smile crossing it momentarily, proclaimed for the record the fateful meaning of the votes.

“Pursant to the resolution, Article I of that resolution is adopted and will be reported. to the house.”

Then he rapped his gavel once, and adjourned the session.

After she left the hearing room, Representative Barbara Jordan, a Texas Democrat who voted for impeachment, said “There were tears behind doors and off camera after the vote, from both men and women.”

The outcome was signaled two days ago, in the rhetoric of the opening debate of the deliberations, but its arrival was, all the same, stunning.

The momentous nature of the decision, underlined in the words and the bearing of the Congressmen who made it, and in the hush that fell over room 2141 of the Rayburn House Office Building as the roll was called, was unmistakable.

Not since 1936, when the House impeached and the Senate removed Judge Halsted L. Ritter from the United States District Court in Florida, had any Government official faced. the process of a Congressional, judgment of his conduct.

Mr. Nixon will be only the 13th American official in history—and the only President, since Andrew Johnson was impeached but acquitted 106 years ago—to face the ultimate.] potential political penalty of forced removal from high office,

House leaders have made tentative arrangements to begin 100 hours of impeachment debate by the middle of next month. The completion of the drafting of the charges by the Judiciary Committee, probably next Monday or Tuesday will be followed by the committee's preparation of a formal report) detailing the evidence on which the recommendations are based.

Should the House vote to impeach Mr. Nixon, the formal charges will be sent immediately to the floor of the Senate. After a brief period in which the President would prepare his defense, the Senate would then conduct the trial, with Warren E. Burger, Chief Justice of the United States, presiding.

Could Take 2 Months

Senator Mike Mansfield of Montana, the Senate Democratic leader, has estimated that the trial might take two months or more—with House members prosecuting and Mr. Nixon's lawyers defending against the accusations. Should the trial go beyond the Jan. 3 expiration of the current Congress, Mr. Mansfield has said, any new Senators elected in November would be seated as “alternate jurors” to sit in judgment after Jan. 3.

Although the committee will still consider the addition of two or more other articles of impeachment, the debate and decisions on them are likely to be anticlimactic. The vote tonight began the process that can end only in the refusal of the House to continue it or in the decision of the Senate to convict or acquit Mr. Nixon.

The panel will consider on Monday an article accusing the President of using a variety of clandestine and irregular methods, in alleged abuse of the limits on his authority, to eavesdrop on citizens, to harass political opponents and reward friends, and to attempt the improper use or sensitive Govern ment agencies. Nearly all of the panel's Democrats and six Republicans have proclaimed their tendencies to endorse the charge.

A third article proposed by the second‐ranking Republican, Representative Robert McClory of Illinois, would call Mr. Nixon to account for allegedly treat ing Congress with contempt by refusing to surrender 147 taped White House conversations and a number of other documents subpoenaed by the impeach. ment inquiry.

Some committee Democrats are also seeking support for charges that Mr. Nixon willfully evaded the payment of Federal income taxes and that his conduct in ordering the secret bombing of Cambodia in 1969 was in contravention of his constitutional authority. But they are not likely to be approved by a committee majority.

The full House may in the expected two weeks of debate, amend the committee's recommendations, striking or adding charges, and can adopt them in whole or in part. But the committee's findings, after months of investigation, are expected to carry great weight in producing a bipartisan House vote to impeach.

The committee reached its final decision on the first article of impeachment at the end of the fourth day of deliberations on Mr. Nixon's conduct.

Moves Swiftly

In a vivid reversal of the acrimonious debate over the impeachment article yesterday, the committee moved swiftly and with an attitude of detached fatalism today toward the beginning of the formal process that could eventually bring President Nixon to trial in the Senate.

The committee quickly approved five technical changes in the language of the first article submitted yesterday by Mr. Sarbanes.

Republicans who had sought, For a dozen hours into the night yesterday, to eliminate, one by one, the nine subsections of the Sarbanes proposal abandoned the tactic today and called for a decisive vote.

“There is no way the outcome of this vote is going to be changed by debate,” Representative Charles W. Sandman Jr., Republican of New Jersey, announced in withdrawing his motions to strip the subsections from the article.

“We're not bowing just to bow,” declared another Republican opponent of impeachment Representative Delbert L. Latta of Ohio. “We're bowing to the obvious,” he added, “and the obvious is—we don't have the votes.”

Democrats and Republicans who support the charge that Mr. Nixon engaged in obstruction of justice in the Watergate case, making up a substantial bipartisan majority on the committee, in turn withdrew their objections to prolonging the debate.

Mr. Flowers embraced one of the gutting motions that Mr. Sandman had abandoned offering it, he madetclear, as a vehicle to spell out—largely to the national television audience—the evidence in support of the charge against the President.

Read Off Evidence

Impeachment advocates, number of whom had assembled supporting data for the charges overnight, read off item after item of the evidence damaging to. the President's defense against the obstruction article.

Representative Cohen read seven elements of supporting information for the subsection accusing Mr. Nixon of having withheld evidence from Watergate investigators. When Mr. Cohen's time to debate the issue expired, other impeachment supporters yielded their five minutes to him to cite additional elements of the case.

Various Republican supporters of the President—Representatives Charles E. Wiggins of California, Wiley Mayne of Iowa and Trent Lott of Mississippi in particular—sought, in a series of five‐minute recitals, to respond to the charges against the President with elements of evidence that in their view exonerated him of any wrongdoing.

Ultimately the committee agreed by voice vote, to retain the subsection in the article. Mr. Rodino then recessed the meeting to determine whether to bring the article of impeachment to a formal vote immediately or to continue spelling out the basis on which it was drawn.

The most significant change in the first of the three likely articles of impeachment to be acted upon by the panel was the change made, at the urging of Mr. Railsback in the preamble to the article.

All day yesterday the President's advocates on the committee contended that there was no proof to support the preamble's assertion that Mr. Nixon “made it his policy” to obstruct, delay and impede the Watergate investigation.

Mr. Railsback and other accusers of the President, who had countered that what was involved was a “pattern of conduct” on the part of Mr. Nixon and his close subordinates, caucused this morning and agreed to change the wording of the charge.

As offered early this afternoon by Mr. Railsback, and accepted with only one dissenting voice vote, the amendment changed the preamble to read as follows:

“Richard M. Nixon, using the powers of his high office, engaged personally and through his subordinates and agents in a course of conduct or plan designed to delay, impede and obstruct the investigation of such unlawful entry; to cover’ up, conceal and protect thosel responsible; and to conceal the’ existence and scope of other unlawful covert activities.”

Only Representative David W. Dennis, Republican of Indiana, shouted a loud “No,” when the alteration was put to 11 voice vote. Nine or 10 other opponents of impeachment on the 38‐member committee remained mute for the vote, permitting the inevitable to happen.

The change occurred with such swiftness and minimal opposition that the President's accusers on the committee did not need to resort to the use of a bill of particulars drafted overnight by John M. Doar, the special counsel on impeachment, to detail the basis for the central charge.

The document listed 50 separate alleged acts by Mr. Nixon and his close associates and concluded that a “decision” by the President to engage in a Watergate cover‐up “is the only one that could explain a pattern of undisputed incidents that otherwise cannnot be explained.”

Mr. Doar and his staff had also armed various impeachment proponents with segments of the evidence intended to support the nine subsections of the draft article.

Representative Butler used the material in support of the charge that Mr. Nixon had condoned or taken part in “counseling witnesses with respect to the giving of false or misleading statements.”

The nature of the parliamentary. maneuvers to bring such material to light was illustrated by Mr. Butler's use of five minutes allotted to proponents of the striking motion to cite elements of the evidence. When the time expired, he asked for —and got—five minutes more time, from that allotted to opponents of the motion, to continue his narrative.

“I'll take any time I can get,” Mr. Butler said, with a broad grin.

Likewise Representative Lawrence J. Hogan, Republican of Maryland, stated the case for the allegation that Mr. Nixon interfered with investigations by the Department of Justice, the Watergate special prosecutor and several Congressional panels, inclding the House Judiciary committee.

Representative Joshua Eilberg, Democrat of Pennsylvania, had agreed to make tehe case in support of the accusation that Mr. Nixon condoned and acquiesced in “the stirreptitious payment of subStantial funds of money for The purpose of obtaining the silejde or influencing the testimony” of Watergate burglars;,:arid other key figures. 2,

And Representative one Owens, Democrat of Utah,,;had been prevailed upon to read the elements of the charge that Mr. Nixon made “false or misleading public statements for‐the purpose of deceiving the people of the United States” ‐about the involvement of the White House and the Committee for the Re‐election of the president in the Watergate matter.